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Comment by angarg12 | Hacker News Reader

There is something oddly humbling and inspiring about this story. The scientist thanklessly slaved away for a year and half before even producing the first breakthrough. It must require an immense amount of perseverance to do so. It also reminds me to the craft mentality and patience of Jiro dreams of sushi.

Very refreshing when contrasted with western mentality, where people can't wait to get promoted fast enough.

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> Very refreshing when contrasted with western mentality, where people can't wait to get promoted fast enough.

The guy arm-wrestled the laws of physics to create something everyone including his own bosses said was impossible, and for his labors he got raised to $60k/yr (yeah I know it’s more now, but not like 10x more). I’d say this is more of a cautionary tale for ambitious inventors to demand their worth from their employers, as opposed to a fable about good things happening to people who keep their heads down and just work.

You're comparing a whole billion people to someone who went on to earn a Nobel, it's a little unfair. There's plenty of people in the West (and East, and South and North) with massive, even unhealthy grit and determination, and plenty of people in Japan that just conform to the standard work culture of the country.

Also survivor bias at 11. I bet there are currently thousands, all around the world, devoting their lives to something that would not yield any significant result. Like the nuclear fussion menctioned in the video.

I'd rather grind to put humanity on a better path than to be cozy leeching off our unsustainable path.

The puzzling thing is how he was able to just keep ignoring orders from management to stop working on the pet project. Clearly this required quite some resources to continue and he didn't get fired. I don't know if I could get away with this at a Faang-type job.

It's much harder to fire people in Japan due to their labor laws. The result is that companies often just make employees as uncomfortable as possible to try and make them quit. There are stories about Konami during its worst period for example doing things like blocking access to the internet, banning employees having their own email addresses, or forcing people to do menial jobs instead of their real jobs.

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